Why I chose to join AC Grayling's private university

Dr Suzannah Lipscomb left the public sector to join the New College of Humanities. She says it deserves applause not contempt

Why support a fee-paying model? Because the truth of the matter is that all academics are, and will be, teaching in fee-paying institutions. The horse bolted when tuition fees were introduced. Photograph: Uriel Sinai/Getty Images

Reading the deluge of comments about New College of the Humanities since it launched on Sunday, I have, at times, hardly recognised the portrayal of the institution that I have decided to join.

I too support improved accessibility to disadvantaged students; I too deplore the removal of public funding for the humanities, and I agree wholeheartedly with the Oxford dons who passed a vote of no confidence in government policy on Higher Education on Tuesday. I believe that these cuts to humanities funding are a shameful indictment of our country. In addition, the introduction of higher £9,000 fees for all students not only acts as a worrying deterrent to the bright but disadvantaged, but puts further pressures on university humanities' departments to deliver at a time when the funding is being slashed. According to many of the views I've read, I ought to be a prime candidate to root for NCH's demise: so why have I chosen to move there from the public sector?

Well, first, because I, like the vast majority of my fellow academics, simply care about, and am dedicated to, quality teaching at university level. Educating our young is the most important thing we, as a country, can do, but this is best done through engaged individual attention. I know that even at the very best universities there are simply not the resources to provide one-on-one tutorials. Seminars are normally for groups of 12 to 15 students. And in many universities PhD students provide much of this teaching. I want to be part of a system that will provide quality individual teaching by excellent and experienced teachers in a university college that can offer 12 to 13 contact hours a week, including two tutorials, one of which will be one-on-one.

The NCH model will allow for this quality of learning experience for all students. It is a disgrace that rather than working to extend this tutorial system – that many of the members of the cabinet were privileged to enjoy when they were at university (mostly studying for humanities degrees, incidentally) – recent governments have chosen further to entrench existing inequalities within the university system.

Second, I, like any other academic, believe that bright young people from disadvantaged backgrounds should be able to receive the very best education. NCH will be charging fees of £18,000 a year for those who can afford to pay, but a significant portion of these revenues and the endowments from its charitable trust will subsidise the scholarships and exhibitions of those who cannot. NCH will offer 50 assisted places in the first year – more than 20% of the year's intake – which will be a mixture of 100% scholarships, which will be means-tested, and exhibitions, where the student will only pay £7,200 a year – a fee lower than almost all UK universities in October 2012. NCH aims to have more than 30% of its students on financial support in subsequent years. As a result, NCH may end up being the one of the only places in England where a bright disadvantaged student can have an entirely free university education.

And it will do this at no cost to the taxpayer. Despite the confusion in the press, NCH won't be poaching any facilities from the University of London: it will pay for anything it uses – putting money into the state system, not withdrawing from it. Until it is given degree-awarding powers in its own right, it will prepare students for external degrees from the University of London through the University of London International Programmes, just as the 'predecessor institutions' of many of today's leading research universities, like the University of Exeter did earlier.

But why support a fee-paying model at all? Because the truth of the matter is that all academics are, and will be, teaching in fee-paying institutions. The horse bolted when tuition fees were introduced; it's no good trying to close the door to NCH as if that will bring back a golden age of free universal higher education.

£9,000 seems not only to be, from 2012, the new norm, but, one suspects, the new floor. I'll be happy to be proved wrong, but in the meantime, it seems to me that we need to face the situation. NCH is only one answer to the problem, but it is at least an attempt at an answer.

I believe that in working at NCH I'll be doing my bit to offer excellent education in the humanities to students, including the disadvantaged – but that doesn't mean that I too won't be hoping, and agitating, for a reversal of current government policy.

Dr Suzannah Lipscomb is currently a Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of East Anglia but has been appointed subject convenor and senior lecturer for history at New College of the Humanities, an independent university college based in Bloomsbury in central London.